Why the International Date Line Looks So Stupid

this is the International Date Line it's the line that the entire world uses to divide the planet into two separate spheres everything to the east of the line is the Western Hemisphere and everything to the west of the line is the Eastern Hemisphere it's also the line where the calendar days of our world both begin and end the time difference from one side of the line to the other is precisely 24 hours meaning that if you cross the line from the East over to the West you immediately add 24 hours to your previous time and you skip forward in entire calendar day and conversely if you travel across the line in the opposite direction from the western side over to the Eastern side you subtract 24 hours from your previous time and you go back an entire calendar day this is why flights from Asia Australia or New Zealand on the western side of the line over to North America on the Eastern side of the line results in so much time zone chaos and jet lag it's why a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo aboard American Airlines departing at 10:05 a. m. local time on January 18th in California takes 12 hours to accomplish but arrives in Tokyo at 3:05 p.

m. the following day on January the 19th 29 hours after you left from Los Angeles and it's why F in the reverse Direction you return flight from Tokyo back to Los Angeles on January 25th departs at 8:25 p. m.

local time in Japan in the evening flies for 9 hours in 55 minutes and arrives in Los Angeles at 1:20 p. m. in the afternoon on the same day of the 25th 7 hours and 5 minutes earlier than the time you departed from back in Tokyo you think that the line across the Pacific where this 24-hour time zone shift happens at should be a straight easy to follow line so The Navigators would know exactly when and where to shift their time forwards or backwards by an entire day but oh boy no it's not instead it is a very complex line that zigs and zags around in multiple directions that causes all kinds of chronological headaches and confusion in multiple bizarre anomalies at various points the line runs directly in between these two islands that are only 2 and 1/2 miles apart geographically but are 21 hours apart in time zones here the International Date Line violently hooks eastwards for hundreds of miles to include a large stretch of islands immediately due south of Hawaii that are chronologically an entire 24 hours behind Hawaii and even further south the line divides another pair of islands that are only a 15minute flight apart from each other but maintain a 24-hour time difference meaning that you can enjoy your birthday or favorite holiday on the Western Island and then immediately fly 15 minutes to the other eastern island to enjoy it all over again because of the way the International Date Line zigs and zags around for 1 hour every single day there are theoretically three separate calendar days going on at the same time at inhabited places on the earth so surface between 10:00 a.

m. and 10:59 a. m.

UTC time in the UK between UTC 10:00 a. m. and 10:59 a.

m. Thursday for example it'll be Thursday morning in the UK and Thursday for most of the rest of the world but it will be 11:00 p. m.

to 11:59 p. m. on a Wednesday night in American Samoa and it'll be 12:00 a.

m. to 12:59 a. m.

very early morning Friday in the small island of kirati in the Central Pacific where the international dat line forms that big hook to the east immediately South of Hawaii so why does the international dat line even look like this in the first place why does it look so stupid on every single map well for starters it's helpful to understand what the International Date Line even is and why its location is really just completely arbitrary and imaginary you see it's basically an arbitrary man-made concept based on the actual non-arbitrary way that the Earth rotates counterclockwise on its axis as the planet travels around the Sun different parts of the planet receive the sun's direct light at different times so when it's high noon and broad daylight and one part of the planet surface another part will be under Shadow and other parts will be experiencing sunset or Sunrise the Earth accomplishes one full rotation roughly every 24 hours which equals 1 day and as a rough sphere the Earth can be divided into 360 equal sections by 360° of longitude when you consider that each of Earth's days has roughly 24 hours within it that you can divide the 360 total degrees of Earth by exactly 24 to reach 24 identically sized zones across the surface of 15° of longitude each then you can sort of think of each of these 24 zones of 15° each as time zones each Zone you move across to the east you add an hour of time to your clock and each Zone you move across to the West you subtract an hour from your clock but the Earth isn't infinite there's only 24 of the time zones and so you need to figure out a location to start your clock at and where to reset it at one single line of longitude must be selected as a reference point to begin your addition or subtraction east or west from which represents the hypothetical prime meridian or 0° of longitude line any of the 360 total lines of longitude could be hypothetically selected for this purpose but regardless of which one you do choose as you steadily move through the time zones east or west from it you eventually travel through either 12 zones East and add 12 hours from your original time or you travel through 12 zones West and subtract 12 hours from your original time until you arrive at the same exact place from both directions the anti- Meridian the exact opposite line on the other side of the globe at 180° from where you first began your count from at the Prime Meridian at 0° here at this line on the other side of the world Crossing it means that your day has to effectively start over a reset you have to either jump backward or forward a full 24 hours in time depending on your direction of travel in order to keep the whole worldwide time system functioning together the Prime Meridian and the anti- Meridian you have selected forms a 360° great circle around the entire Earth's circumference which divides the planet into two equally sized hemispheres an Eastern one and a western one 12 time zones east of the selected prime meridian exist where you consecutively add 1 hour to your original Time Each as you travel further east and 12 more time zones west of the selected prime meridian exist where you subtract 1 hour from your original Time Each as you travel West with a full reset of an entire 24 hours being mandatory once you cross the anti- Meridian on the opposite side of the globe when you eventually cross it either 24 hours ahead in time when you cross from the East to the west or 24 hours backwards in time when you cross from the West to the East and remember where you choose to sent your prime meridian in corresponding anti- Meridian at is completely arbitrary for literally thousands of years Humanity was generally aware of this phenomenon and for many centuries most kingdoms Empires and civilizations used their own separate interpretation of the Prime and anti- Meridian to keep track of time as it made sense for themselves the French used the line of longitude running through Paris to determine the prime meridian that they were using to keep track of time as they traveled away from the capital while the Germans most often used the line of longitude running through Berlin the Danes used the one running through Copenhagen and the Chinese used the one running through Beijing the British of course were not any different from any of the others and so they used the line of longitude running through London to determine their own prime meridian that they used to keep track of time as they traveled westwards or eastwards eventually in the 1850s this coalesced into the British system of time properly defining the prime meridian that they were using as following the line of longitude that ran precisely through the Royal Observatory in granich a town in the southeast of London as the maritime based British Empire dominated the entire global system of trade Commerce and travel across the 19th century approximately 2third of all the ships in the world plying the world's oceans by the late 19th century we're already using this british-based system of global timekeeping anyway with a prime meridian based on the line running through grenwich and conveniently the selected anti- Meridian or International Date Line opposite of the prim Meridian largely ran through a mostly uninhabited stretch of the Earth surface across Far Eastern Siberia and then through the mostly empty Pacific Ocean all the way down to Antarctica as the 19th century progressed globalization was steadily bringing world trade and commerce ever closer together but the onethird of the ships on the world's oceans that were still using competing systems of global timekeeping with differently defined Prime meridians and International Date lines was making international business and trade relationships inefficient and needlessly cumbersome that was why in 1884 the Chester Arthur Administration in the United States called together an International Conference to finally establish a single worldwide universally recognized standardized system with one prime meridian and one International Date Line that the entire world would accept and follow going forward and owing to the outsized influence of the British Empire at the time on global trade and the fact that around 2third of the world's ships were already using the British system anyway it was determined at that 1884 convention that the lion of longitude running through Greenwich England would indeed become the universally recognized prime meridian or 0 de of longitude and its corresponding anti- Meridian on the other side of the Earth would become the universally recognized International Date Line but even though these were the lines that were selected as the international standard The Chosen International line on the 180th line of longitude ran through numerous prickly geopolitical issues that have caused many nations to subsequently decide on shifting themselves to one side of the international dayline or the other based on various economic or political reasons and because there's no single worldwide governing body that determines how or under what circumstances the international dat line can be shifted the act of Shifting it is entirely up to unilateral actions by the countries with territor straddling the line that the rest of the world has to respect and accept and sometimes those International dayline shifting actions have been really really dumb one of the first notable problems came in the Philippines for many centuries ever since the Philippines were first colonized by the Spanish in the early 1520s the Philippines were administratively assigned to the vice royalty of New Spain which had most of its territory over in the Americas and was centered on Mexico consequently the trade relationship of the Spanish Philippines was based on the Port of aquapulco in Mexico and so to keep the Philippines within the same calendar day as Mexico the Spanish authorities treated the Philippines as if they were on the Eastern side of the International Date Line despite it you know being in the Far Western side of the Pacific consequently for a total of 323 years 9 months in 2 weeks from Saturday the 16th of March 1521 until the 30th of December 1844 the Philippines were always one fall calendar day behind the rest of all of their neighbors in Asia the situation only started changing after Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821 and the trade relations of the still Spanish ruled Philippines gradually began shifting towards their geographically closer Neighbors in China and the Dutch East Indies instead in 1844 the Spanish authorities in the Philippines decided that being a full calendar day behind their largest trade Partners was no longer working out and in order to fix it they decided to shift themselves over to the western side of the International Dateline by deleting the date of Tuesday the 31st of December from the calendar entirely Monday the 30th of December 1844 in the Philippines was thus immediately followed by Wednesday the 1st of January 1845 and the International Date Line was shifted further to the east to match much more closely with the 180th line of longitude however the news of that change apparently didn't reach much of the Western World until the later 1890s because you still had encyclopedias like this one published in Germany as late as 1888 that erroneously showed the International Date Line still carving a path super far away from the 180th to include the Philippines east of the line 43 years after the Philippines had officially stopped doing that but of course the Philippines weren't the only administrative issue that the International Date Line set precisely to the 180th line of longitude cost there was also the fact that the selected International Date Line ran directly through a part of the Russian Empire in Siberia as well and separated Russian Alaska and North America from the rest of the Empire too so in order to avoid having this part of Far Eastern Siberia being a completely different calendar day than Western Siberia and in order to keep Alaska within the same general day as the rest of the Empire the Russians initially interpreted the International Date Line's position to carve violently eastwards to keep the entirety of Alaska west of the date line which means that for a time in the 19th century the International Date Line effectively looked more something like this which is way more ridiculous than it looks like today but naturally when the United States purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867 Washington decided to promptly shift the International Date Line westwards to put the new Alaskan territory completely east of the line in order to keep it all in line with the rest of the American time zones that are all east of the International Date Line the transfer ceremony changing the sovereignty of Alaska from Russia to the United States therefore happened at 3:30 p. m. local time on Saturday the 19th of October 1867 which was immediately shifted backwards a full 24 hours in time to 3:30 p.

m. on Friday the 18th of October 1867 effectively starting a full 24 hours all over again for Alaska this is why in modern times today the International Date Line doesn't follow the 180th line of longitude exactly in the north but it zigzags to keep all of Russia's territory west of the line and all of America's territory east of the line in order to avoid cutting off the Eastern side of Far Eastern Russia the line Dives East and then runs through the center of the bearing straight and right through the center of the diam islands the Western most one of which is Russian and the easternmost one American creating this anomaly where the islands were only geographically 2 and 1/2 mes apart but chronologically 21 hours apart the international dat line then zigzags back far to the west and far away from the original 180th line of longitude in order to keep all of Alaska's ution islands all within the same time zone in the same calendar day as the rest of the state the International Date Line shifts as far west to keep Alaska's Adu island east of the line and Russia's Commander Islands west of it before it bends back to the southeast again and returns back to follow the 180th degree line again after the end of World War II in 1945 the United States assumed direct control over a vast area of the Pacific that it called the trust territory of the Pacific Islands in the Pacific which eventually evolved into the modern independent States of Micronesia the Marshall Islands and Pala all in a compact of free association with the United States the territory included the remote atal of quaja line in the Marshall Islands which had always been west of the international dat line but after it came under American control the US built a military base on the atal and staffed it with hundreds of their personnel in order to administratively keep the military base in qualine within the same calendar day and time zone as the US Pacific fleet's headquarters in Hawaii the US shifted the International Date Line West of quaja line in 1945 and kept the atal over on the opposite side from the rest of the Marshall Islands but after the Marshall Islands including qualine became independent from the United States in 1986 the new government obviously founded administratively challenging having one of their atols in a completely different calendar day 24 hours behind the rest of the country on the western side of the line and so only a few years later after Independence in 1993 the Marshall Islands government fixed this problem by simply deleting Saturday the 21st of August 1993 from qual Line's calendar the people of qualine unfortunately only got a one- day weekend that week of August as the days simply shifted from Friday the 20th immediately to Sunday the 22nd and qualine was shifted back over to the international dat Line's western side as a result the international dayline overall was shifted back to following the 180th line of longitude precisely which it continues to follow in the present day for a while further south until it reaches the biggest and the most obvious anomaly of all this giant hook that cleaves the International Date Line super far away from the 180th hundreds of miles away to the east the reason for this is because of the small island nation of kirbos home to only around 120,000 people before kab's independence in 1979 the islands that now constitute the country were divided between a British colony in the west who kept them on the western side of the International Date Line and an American colony in the East who kept theirs on the Eastern side of the line to be within the same time zone and calendar day as Hawaii but when the British granted kabas its independence in 1979 and the United States subsequently granted them their Eastern Islands back the new country straddled the International Date Line itself with its eastern and western Islands on opposite ends and in different days running the day-to-day Administration like this with a 23h hour time difference between the country's capital and its easternmost Islands was proving immensely difficult and so in 1994 only the year after quadel line shifted themselves over to the International Date Line's western side kabos became the next country to decide on Shifting the boundaries of the International Date Line again in order to keep the entire country within the same general calendar dat contained within three time zones all to the west of the International Date Line Kiros decided to shift the International Date Line All the Way East to nearly the 150° line of longitude about 30 full degrees are roughly two entire conventional time zones east of where the anti- Meridian truly lies along the 180th degree of longitude they did this by deciding that kab's easternmost Islands would delete Saturday the 31st of December 1994 from their calendar effectively skipping immediately from Friday the 30th of December 1994 to Sunday the 1st of January 1995 technically speaking though the terms of the previously agreed upon 1917 treaty titled the angl French conference on timekeeping at Sea continues to remain valid for the sake of Simplicity that treaty effectively treats the 180th Meridian precisely as the true International Date Line for the purpose of eping on ships at Sea in the open ocean when ships transition from the open ocean into a country's territorial waters 12 nautical miles out from their shorelines they're supposed to adopt the standard local time being used in that country and then when they go back out into the open ocean Beyond those territorial Waters they revert back to the International System of time zones based precisely on the 180th Meridian as the international date line along with the exactly evenly spaced 24-hour time zones around the world of 15° each this means that in theory the islands of kabos east of the 180th Meridian are truly chronological enclaves when it's Friday on the Eastern islands of kabos they're truly enclaves of Friday surrounded by an ocean in which it is actually Thursday but because it's very difficult to draw something out to that minute of a scale on something as macro as a world map maps are rarely ever actually drawn that way and so for the sake of simplicity nearly all maps including Google and Apple Maps just show this giant hook incorporating all of kabos west of the International Date Line instead this is also why despite being along the same lines of longitude Hawaii and the island of kirati within kabos are full 24 hours apart from each other chronologically it's also why at least in theory kab's easternmost Islands were the very first places in the world to begin the New Millennium at in 2000 and are these days always the first inhabited places in the world to officially welcome every new year so then after swinging so far east to include all of kiraboss west of the International Date Line the line swings back westwards but continues to remain far to the east of the true 180th Meridian as it navigates through the complex economic and political interests of the many islands in melanesia and Polynesia as it currently stands the islands of Samoa too Wallace and Futuna Fiji Tonga tuvalu and New Zealand's caradec and Chatham islands are all west of the International Date Line while French Polynesia American Samoa and the semi-independent nations of the Cook Islands in the UA in a free association agreement with New Zealand are all east of the line and a full day behind all of the islands west of the line but the strangest part of the international dayline down here is how it bisects in between the islands of Samoa and American Samoa two islands that are only 120 M away are a 15minute flight from each other but which are chronologically a full 24 hours apart from each other and are always in different calendar days the reason why this anomaly of the international Date Line exists today as with pretty much all of the other anomalies dates back to the 19th century in the era of Western colonization in the late 19th century all of the islands of Samoa were being visited and colonized by various Western powers and the United States in particular was acquiring a very strong set of interest in them with the US Naval Station getting set up within the Strategic natural Harbor of Pago Pago on the modern island of American Samoa in 1892 American Merchants were able to convince through bribery the rulers of Samoa at the time to shift all of their Islands away from the the western side of the International Date Line and over to the Eastern side of it instead in order to better facilitate trade and business between Samoa and the American West Coast doing so shifted all of Samoa from being a relatively difficult to manage 22 hours ahead of California in time to only 4 hours behind it afterwards and it was all accomplished by simply repeating the 4th of July 1892 in Samoa immediately all over again after the day had ended so that the moment the Clock Struck midnight on July 4th that year Samoans got to celebrate the foreign American holiday all over again like some weird real life Groundhog Day event then a few years later in 1899 the San Islands were politically divided between the German Empire in the west and the United States in the East but the International Date Line still remained to the west of the German controlled Islands those German controlled Samoan Islands passed to a joint UK New Zealand Colonial Administration in 1915 during the first world war and then they eventually became the independent country of Samoa later on in 1962 the American controlled part of Samoa how however has remained a part of the United States ever since and it continues to officially be an unincorporated territory of the US to this very day representing the southernmost piece of US Territory anywhere in the world and the only inhabited part of the United States to be located south of the Equator as time went on after the rest of samo's Independence in 1962 though the new country's trade relationships gradually shifted away from the United States over on the other side of the Pacific and towards the much closer countries of New Zealand and Australia and by extension through them with China as well by the time the 2000s eventually came around Samoa was still stuck over on the Eastern side of the International Date Line just as it had been for over a century after the Americans had bribed them to do it back in 1892 and that fact was severely hampering Samoa's ability to conduct business with their new largest trading partners when it was a Friday in Samoa and business was open it was already Saturday in New Zealand and Australia and business was closed and when it was Sunday in Samoa and mostly everyone was taking the day off for church it was already Monday in Australia Australia New Zealand meaning the Samoa was missing out on two business days every week with their biggest trading partners and so business could only be effectively conducted between them for just three days a week instead of the usual five and that was causing a lot of frustrations in somoa and so in order to align themselves more closely with New Zealand and Australia Samoa took their first decision to change the side of the road that they drove on from the right over to the left in 2009 just like the Australians and new zealanders did and then finally in 2011 they along with too at the same time took the decision to each finally shift themselves back over to the western side of the International Date Line in order to be closer connected to Australia New Zealand and less connected with the United States so far the last and the most recent time that the International Day line has been officially shifted the event took place at the stroke of midnight so that just 2 minutes after 11:59 p. m.

on Thursday the 29th of December 2011 Samoa's 186,000 residents jumped forward in time a full 24 hours completely skipping Friday the 30th and jumping straight into Saturday the 31 the Samoan government even declared that it would fully compensate every employee in the country for their missed work day on Friday that had gotten deleted as a result Samoa shifted itself from being 22 hours behind Sydney to being only 2 hours ahead of it while simultaneously of course shifting itself from being only 4 hours behind California to being 22 hours ahead of it instead and as American Samoa remains a territory of the United States the International Date Line now runs in between the Samoan Islands with American Samoa continuing to remain only 1 hour behind Hawaii and only 4 hours behind California but 22 hours ahead of Sydney and 24 hours ahead of its neighboring independent Samoa that's only 120 M or a 15minute flight away from there the International Date Line steadily bends back to the Southwest keeping all of New Zealand's Islands west of the line line before it finally returns back to the 180th Meridian again which it then follows exactly without issue all the way down to Antarctica all in all that's how the international dat line got its current shape and why it looks so stupid in so many places but it's probably not even done with being messed around with either there's potentially more issues with it that will come up at some point in the future such as the problems faced by the Cook Islands in UA both of them are non UN member State independent countries that are in what's called a free association agreement M with New Zealand they're mostly independent but nearly all of their citizens are also citizens of New Zealand at the same time while New Zealand further continues to provide them with all of their defense needs as well both of them are highly integrated with New Zealand but both of them are also still notably east of the international dat line meaning that New Zealand is 23 hours ahead of the Cook Islands and 24 hours ahead of newa in order to potentially fix that problem the International Date Line could end up being redrawn again sometime in the future somewhere South of American Samoa in order to carve out another Eastward hook south of kiraboss to include the Cook Islands in newa west of the line and keep them both within the same calendar day as the rest of New Zealand so who knows maybe the international dat line will end up looking even more messed up in the future than it already does today but you know what's not messed up being able to eat great tasting healthy meals without having to spend all the time for cooking or all the money for takeout and the best way to do that is with this video sponsor factor factor is a service that I'm very familiar with because it's what I usually eat on my busy week nights when I don't have enough time to go to the grocery store and I don't want to chop prep or clean up afterwards either I'm a genuine customer of theirs because I found that it's simply the best solution for all of those times when you don't have the time to prep or cook or clean but still want to eat well anyway Factor's concept is pretty simple you pick from any of dozens of options on their app and then the next week an insulated box shows up on your doorstep with never frozen meals that you heat up in just 2 or 3 minutes and that's literally it they're owned by hellofresh and they've got the same great quality but with a focus on serving as a solution for when you have even less time to prepare your meals they've also got dozens of add-ons you can include to your orders as well from breakfast options like delicious apple cinnamon pancakes bacon and cheddar egg bites and potato bacon egg and cheese Skillets or for an easy Wellness boost they've got refreshing beverage options like cold press juices shakes and smoothies all of which means that I get to just completely skip the grocery store all together so if you're ready to have amazing meals at home with completely minimal effort head over to factor75.